Op-ed: When will iPhone 5 users stop seeing black bars on their apps?

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The iPhone 5 has been out for nearly two months now. But judging by the overall app landscape, you'd hardly know it has been seven weeks (or eight, if you start counting at the date of the announcement) since the iPhone 5 made its debut. While some apps have been updated to take advantage of the iPhone 5's larger screen, many more have not.

What's the holdup? That's the question we've found ourselves asking here at the Ars Orbiting HQ. Whether we use the iPhone 5 because it's directly connected to our jobs (ahem) or because it's what works best in our personal lives, we've all run into apps that are clearly still formatted for the smaller iPhone 4/4S screen, with black bars at the top and bottom. And these aren't little, no-name apps either—there are some major companies, firms with wildly popular applications, that have yet to update their apps for the iPhone 5. [Editor's Note: most of the applications have received other maintenance updates, and several of them new features. But no iPhone 5 screen support. This is not a list of "dead" apps.]

Who are we talking about? There are a couple of software giants: Google—which mysteriously has updated its Gmail and Chrome apps, but not Latitude, Translate, or Voice—and Microsoft, with its Bing app. There are also the airlines, like American Airlines, FlyDelta, and jetBlue, which have yet to update their apps for the larger screen, or Amtrak for train enthusiasts like our Deputy Editor Nate Anderson.

And then there are the news organizations: BBC News, NPR News, ESPN Scorecenter, Zite, and News.me (though we're not holding our breath for that last one). And the ones that help us get things done every day, like Peapod, American Express, Zipcar, GrubHub, TaxiMagic, Uber, eTrade, and Withings. Some major communications apps have yet to be updated, like Skype and AIM.

Gamers don't appear to be particularly high on the update priority list either. Scramble, Matching,Plants vs. Zombies, the original AngryBirds, FruitNinja, Civ Revolution, Tetris, Battleship, Catapult King, Fieldrunners,Fieldrunners 2, Modern War, Crime City, and Kingdom Age were all named by Ars staffers as apps that don't have iPhone 5 versions yet.

And there are plenty more where those came from.

But why?

No one is required to issue an update just for our edification—that's the whole benefit to iOS 6 being able to run apps made for iPhone 4/4S on an iPhone 5's screen. But the time it has taken for these (and other) apps to see an update for Apple's latest iPhone is beginning to drag out, and it makes it seem like app makers don't care as much about the iPhone as they once did—at least from an end-user's point of view.

One thing we do know is that Apple's review process doesn't appear to be holding things back: we're told by several developers that the wait time on the iOS App Store is roughly a week or less right now. Those six to seven other weeks are still unaccounted for.

But there are a number of other theories floating around about the holdup. One developer speculated that companies might be holding onto their iPhone 5-formatted apps for a planned feature update sometime in the future—that is, maybe Google is planning to add some mind-blowing new features to its Voice app, and it will update the app for the iPhone 5 when that release is finally out.

Another developer suggested that some app makers might be fearful of making their existing app ratings and reviews invisible by issuing a brand new update for iPhone 5. Apple's App Store reviews system now makes a point of only showing you reviews for the most current version of the app as a default, so if a particular app has some phenomenal reviews for an older version, the developer may be hesitant to start "anew" with a fresh slate.

This plays into the next reason speculated by some of our developer sources: "laziness and a lack of pride." Could it be that some of these app makers just don't feel the need to rush to get their apps up-to-speed on the latest iPhone, and they don't care enough about their work to want to do so quickly? That frame of mind undoubtedly plagues many of the thousands of apps on the App Store, though we would be disappointed to learn that the companies behind some of the bigger apps feel that way about their end-user experiences.

Feeling a little stale

Whatever reason companies have for holding off on updating their apps for the iPhone 5, the end result is that the App Store is beginning to feel a bit stale for longtime and new users alike. Imagine being one of the 5 million people who bought an iPhone 5 over its launch weekend in September and being brand new to the platform: how would you feel if half the apps you tried to download weren't made with your device in mind?

Even though it's not directly Apple's fault, it is Apple's problem. After all, Apple benefits from the perception that it has the hottest mobile platform on both the developer and the user side. Without more current updates for the most recent devices, it looks from the outside like iOS as a platform is slowing down. Where is the enthusiasm to get things up to date?

I reached out to Apple for comment on this phenomenon but received no response by publication time.

To be fair, there are plenty of developers who have updated their apps to be more friendly to the iPhone 5's elongated screen. Facebook, Alien Blue, Kindle, Nest, Instagram, Instapaper, Tripit, The Weather Channel, Pandora, Spotify, Chase… all these apps and more have been updated to take advantage of the larger screen, and their users have noticed.

So to you developers who are dragging your feet, where's the love for the iPhone 5?

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Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

132 Reader Comments

I've seen a lot of my apps/games update... (and I don't have a 5). I guess I hadn't been paying much attention.

One issue with updating for the iPhone 5 is that in order to do so you have to use the newest Xcode. Which means that you're also ditching support for anything older than the 3GS. This means that app developers have to decide if they want to add support for the slightly larger screen or provide backwards compatibility for the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G.

I'm sure that's a very small portion of the market, but for some of the apps mentioned in the article it may be a concern.

Harking back to the iPhone 4 & upgrades to apps to have retina support, I see no relative absence of upgrades. It takes time & no little effort to come out with a new app version & not everyone feels the need to sync their upgrade cycle to apple's.

Sorry Jacqui, I see people crying out for all apps to be updated ASAP as unrealistic.

It took me 3 hours to fully test my relatively simple app for the iPhone 5 and I'm just one guy. Anyone who hasn't updated and is using a simple UITableView for the UI is BEING LAZY. PERIOD. YES, I'M LOOKING AT YOU WHATSAPP.

Ugh. Developers used to have more respect for their users. And this is also the reason why Apple picked 1024x768 resolution for the iPad mini and that 2048x1536 will be the resolution for the Retina version. Developers do not want to do more work.

One issue with updating for the iPhone 5 is that in order to do so you have to use the newest Xcode. Which means that you're also ditching support for anything older than the 3GS. This means that app developers have to decide if they want to add support for the slightly larger screen or provide backwards compatibility for the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G.

Is it possible that developers simply don't consider it very important to update their apps for an extra of less than 200 pixels? I'm sure it's on everyone's agenda but when you're looking at working on fixing bugs or adding new features, extra screen height doesn't seem that important.

Hmm. Did these apps lacking iPhone 5 updates receive *any* update? I think many developers and companies just roll this in with the next update they're working on anyway. I don't think I've seen any update in the last month or so that didn't include a line "optimized for the iPhone 5" or so. There are apps that haven't seen any update in a long time though and I don't really expect the iPhone 5 to cause those developers to break into action just so.

And: It has been just two months. Especially with games a change in resolution can trigger an awful lot of changes. This is nothing you can expect to be finalized and tested and shipped within two weeks. And then these apps have still to run on the vast majority of older iPhones, it's not that you could abandon the old resolutions.

Honestly, if all apps would've been updated after two months this would be a miracle.

Harking back to the iPhone 4 & upgrades to apps to have retina support, I see no relative absence of upgrades. It takes time & no little effort to come out with a new app version & not everyone feels the need to sync their upgrade cycle to apple's.

Sorry Jacqui, I see people crying out for all apps to be updated ASAP as unrealistic.

Games certainly take time to test, and that's if it's worthwhile. But for any app that just uses UITableView (which is a HUGE chunk of them), you only need to include the image "Default_568h@2x.png" and adjust a few autolayout settings in .xib files to support the iPhone 5. The phone has been out for almost 2 months. Developers are being lazy at this point.

I'm sure a lot of it is simply the economics of scale at work. If you have apps for both Android and iOS, adding new features or fixing bugs that affect the 98% of your userbase that doesn't have an iPhone 5 makes a lot more sense than devoting resources to redesigning your app for that small handful of users. After all, iOS only represents 15% of smartphones being sold, and the iPhone 5 represents a small chunk of that 15%.

Maybe because updating apps to take advantage of a slightly taller screen might not be worth the effort. I mean, taking advantage of retina display is a big deal but for the jump from 4/4s -> 5, not so much.

While it's certainly not Android-level complexity, this is what happens when you start to fragment your market. Multiple resolutions, multiple screen formats.... these things take time. Couple that with the expectation of tablet-optimized apps alongside phone-optimized apps for essentially the same service, and you're getting more and more versions you have to support. It's not like anythings broken, so what's the rush?

It also has 0 do to with any shared code with their android devices or ANY such nonsense. I even find it hard to believe that MOST games would take much more than a few hours work to support the new resolution. It's like all those games that took forever to support wide-screen monitors.

So to you developers who are dragging your feet, where's the love for the iPhone 5?

I sense an awful lot of entitlement there. The $1 isn't going to pay any self-respecting developer long term. You are not willing to pay what good software development costs, so face the consequences.

The fun of sucking up to whiny people behaving completely disrespectful and seemingly ignorant of what it takes to develop is relatively short lived. And yes, Jacqui, your latest contribution is no different.

As an iPhone 4S user, I'm definitely starting to feel like the iOS platform as a whole is getting quite stale. Hopefully the recent executive shakeup at Apple will kick things back into gear.

What I've noticed about smart phones generally is that I can't see much on any platform that would be the killer reason that would get me to switch.

I currently have a 4S which I'm happy with, and although there are some nice Android and WP8 phones out there that I'm sure I'd enjoy using, any differences aren't great enough to make me want to spend the money to change. I guess it's a sign of a maturing market when all the offerings seem pretty good.

I don't think Apple should change the UI just for the sake of doing so but there are some changes I would like to see to bring it more up to date.

I concur with the other iOS developers who have mentioned that, for most apps, it is as simple as adding a Default-568h@2x.png default image to the project and making sure your auto layout properties are correct on the Interface Builder side of things. For other apps like games that use OpenGL to the draw to the screen, the smart thing for them to have done would be to keep the screen's width and height in a set of variables and use those to draw accordingly which also should not take that much time. It must be one of the following three reasons:

1) Developers already working on an update and will roll iPhone 5 support into it2) Developers being lazy3) Developers abandoned all work on the app in question

All of the above are true, and there is another element. Right now developers have an awful lot of choices on their plate. MS, RIM, Amazon and Google are all asking them to rework their apps for their own platforms. A developer has to make a choice, especially right in front of the Holiday season where to spend his time right now. The updates will come, probably packaged in with the next feature upgrade of the app.

As an app developer there are a few reasons that I have and have not updated some apps. Adding iPhone 5 tall mode support takes time and money and that has to be factored into the decisions.

1. Apps have a shelf life, specially for games. If a game isn't likely to sell more units, it doesn't make much sense to go and change all of the art work, the UI and such when the game/app plays just fine as is.

2. What will an app do with that extra real estate? Unless there is compelling reason to use that extra space, what benefit is there to issuing an update that won't change revenue? You're fixing a non-problem. Some apps lend themselves to easy changes others not as much. I'd rather spend my resources on new products and all the new titles will support the iPhone 5.

3. Updates in general take time to code, test and release. Even in the case of an easy UI change to make use of the extra space, it doesn't make a lot of sense to release an update that is just "iOS 6 and iPhone 5 Updates". Wait until your other bugs are fixed, other new features added. Make your update process worth it. If I'm under the hood for other reasons, no reason to not add Tall support.

I'm a small indie shop of one and while I don't have anything like Angry Birds or Facebook that millions of people have. Of my personal 6 iOS titles, like Omnitrivia, I've updated 4 of them, though it meant delaying work on titles I'm building for clients.

I've got at least 2 apps updating every day w/ iPhone 5 support. Almost makes me wish I had one.

Zathrus1 wrote:

One issue with updating for the iPhone 5 is that in order to do so you have to use the newest Xcode. Which means that you're also ditching support for anything older than the 3GS. This means that app developers have to decide if they want to add support for the slightly larger screen or provide backwards compatibility for the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G.

This! This this this this. The new XCode, which you need for iOS6 support, will no longer let you target 4.2 or lower (the last iOS for iPhone 3G), so for developers who are concerned about that, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's easy to say "well screw em" and go w/ iPhone5 support because there are way more iPhone5 users than iPhone 3G users, but other companies may not be ready to make such a call...

Companies are tired of writing specific code to work on four different resolutions. The lowest resolution works on all devices, so why bother.

I agree with this. I do iOS coding and I'm getting tired of all the different screen resolutions.

Garst wrote:

The iPhone "fad" is over (from a developer's stand point). Perhaps developers are done trying to deal with Apple.

Highly argumentative. I'm not sure what you mean by 'trying to deal with apple'. I think Apple treats its developers ok- just don't do something that's guaranteed to piss Apple off like build a voip app which is designed to obviate the 'phone' part of the iPhone.

Garst wrote:

Developers are actually writing their apps to work in HTML5 to make an end-run to deal with Apple and its fragmentation.

Not sure about this either. Javascript performs badly on mobile and it's probably terrible for the battery as well. All good iOS apps are still written in Objective-C/C/C++

Jacqui, why not lay the economics out for us: as a developer, I should roll back to my last release, and add the iPhone5-specific goodies ONLY, and test all those changes, so that I will enjoy ______ (?).

Alternatively, I should add the option to my current in-development version, and make minor additional tests to a more important feature upgrade, leaving Jacqui with a few black pixels for a few more days/weeks. This will not cost much at all.

So: drop everything to rev for iPhone5, and get X in return (delaying all my other in-flight stuff), versus including it in my current unstable-but-cool version, and get Y.

I find it hard to imagine that anybody who's ALREADY working on bug fixes and/or feature enhancements would simply roll out for the iPhone5.

32 out of the 112 apps on my iPhone 5 need updates to fill the big screen. I did not even care to look until I read this article. The apps that I use regularly and care about the most have all been updated.

The new XCode, which you need for iOS6 support, will no longer let you target 4.2 or lower (the last iOS for iPhone 3G), so for developers who are concerned about that, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's easy to say "well screw em" and go w/ iPhone5 support because there are way more iPhone5 users than iPhone 3G users, but other companies may not be ready to make such a call...

Ah, thanks -- I couldn't recall the details on what the new Xcode supported beyond "would not work w/ unsupported phones".

But not supporting older iOS releases is a bigger issue for devs, simply because not everyone wants to update to iOS5 or 6 (even if it's possible). Heck, there are a lot of 3GS users that are still on iOS3 because it had the best performance on the device.

Mind you, from Apple's standpoint it makes sense to cut support for older releases at some point -- and they've maintained backwards compatibility for FAR longer than MS (oh, sorry, different point release -- it won't work without a recompile) or Android. But it still sucks for users (and to some degree devs).

I think the reason is similar to why Android has a dearth of software which really uses a tablet's size: Non-iPhone 5 apps looks okayish so there is no pressing need to update the software, exactly like auto-sized Android apps also looking OK on tablets.

Which actually IMHO makes iOS crappy way of running iPhone apps on an iPad seem smart. If you remember, when the iPad was released there were some complaints of iPhone apps running on iPad still used the non-retina version of the app, even though the retina version would have fitted and would have looked much better. But this also forced developers to code true tablet versions rather than being satisfied with an OK blown-app iPhone app.

Also similar to how Apple handled the OSX transition: No attempts whatsoever to make the Mac OS Classic environment to mimic the Aqua look. Users being forced to use classic apps complained, a lot, and developers had to update the apps if they wanted users to be happy.

So I think in some cases it actually pays in the long run to not spend too much effort on backwards compatibility when releasing new technologies, at least if you want to force developers to start using the new stuff. But not always, of course :-)

My company does an iPad app so it doesn't apply to us, but that extra 200 (or whatever it is) pixels would throw a huge wrench into our game which, for better or worse, is designed for the 4:3 resolution. Not only would we have to redo almost all of the UI art to some degree, the extra screen space would also affect the mechanics of the game in a way that would mean it would almost be two different games. It was big enough of a problem that for the Android port (which is almost universally longer than 4:3) we swallowed the letterbox over going through the design process all over again. And all that for an app we're not directly making money off of.

And I don't think we're entirely alone in that. Most of the apps and games listed wouldn't really be affected by the extra space. But for most games you'd probably still be playing in a letterbox, just a prettier one. Angry Birds would be an exception, but how much money do you suppose they're making on it these days? In PvZ, you can't expand the playing field because that affects the balance of the game (much more time to kill zombies), and there's not really any extra information to show other than the list of zombies you'll be facing.

It's likely apps took just as long to update with each new resolution that came with an iPhone release, but it didn't bother people as much because there was no change to aspect ratio until now. Maybe black bars bother people more than stretched images.

So..... let me get this straight.....The 5 million iphone5 users trump the 100+ million iphone4 users?That..... is bad math.

Plus, from what I gather from the comments, the updates for iphone5 specifically won't be backwards compatible. So, you'd have to build separate apps for each. Currently, they can make one app for iphone4 work on the 5, it just doesn't use the small increase in real estate. Plus, the 5 is a small market segment when compared to the other iphones PLUS the Android market.

Part of this might stem from devs looking at the iphone5 and maybe, just maybe, not being too terribly happy with the direction Apple ran with the 5. It may be simply that they've decide to not jump at Apple's command.